A Pilgrimage to Nejd, or the Cradle of the Arab Race. ... Second ediition.

Lady Anne BLUNT (1837-1917)

A Pilgrimage to Nejd, or the Cradle of the Arab Race. A visit to the court of the Arab Emir , and “Our Persian Campaign” … Second edition. London: John Murray, 1881. 2 volumes, octavo (8 x 5 ¼ inches; 203 x 133 mm). Volume II largely unopened, half-title to each volume, 15 wood-engraved plates including frontispieces, folding map (printed in colors) at the rear of vol.I, wood-engraved illustrations (Occasional generally light spotting). Original cloth, upper covers and spines elaborately blocked in black and gilt, patterned endpapers (front free endpaper of vol.I detached, that in vol.II creased and slightly chipped, spines very lightly soiled and with head and feet bumped). Provenance: Jos. Cowen (bookplates, and small library location labels).

Fine set of the second edition of the Blunt’s account of their 1879 expedition across the Nejd from Beirut, south into the Great Nefud, north to Baghdad and east to the Persian Gulf. Lady Anne was the first European woman to reach the Nejd and, together with her husband, they were the first Europeans to enter the Jebel Shammar in the Nejd "openly and at leisure," free to map and record geographic and physical features.

Lady Anne Blunt was a traveller and breeder of Arab horses, daughter of Ada Lovelace and the granddaughter of Lord Byron. "With [her husband] Blunt she travelled extensively in the Middle East: her scientific interests are manifest in the mass of aneroid readings, barometric pressures, and compass bearings in her journal entries of their travels in the Arabian deserts. There she found happiness, and her numerous journals give a fascinating account of their experiences. Written simply as a private daily record, they provide frank insights into every aspect of her life, including her views on the political events in which her husband was involved. In 1882 the Blunts purchased a 37 acre walled garden outside Cairo. Lady Anne became fluent in Arabic, and the insights she gained into the people and their customs ensured an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Bedouin and their horses. She also translated original Arab texts, two of which were put into verse by Blunt and published in England. Two travel books, The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates (2 vols., 1879) and Pilgrimage to Nejd (2 vols., 1881), despite appearing under Lady Anne's name, were not written by her. Purporting to be extracts from her journals, whole sections describing their travels were rewritten by Blunt." (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).